


loud voice, soft touch

by canticle



Series: canticle's kinkmeme fills [3]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Pre-Canon, dealing with the aftermath of kamoshida breaking ryuji's leg : (
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 06:31:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14038230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canticle/pseuds/canticle
Summary: Written for a prompt on the kinkmeme:Ryuji/Ann cuddling-- Nothing sexual. Can Ryuji be large little spoon? These two deserve all the happiness





	loud voice, soft touch

She’s his second visitor after he’s out of the hospital.

They’ve grown apart over the years, time transforming them from rambunctious kids into sullen teenagers, with history and memories and shitty adults the only thing they still share. He’s heard the rumors about her and Kamoshida; he’s sure she’s heard the rumors about him by now as well, with the way the Shujin rumor mill grinds.

He’d really thought he could take anything Kamoshitty could throw at him.

The agony radiating from his leg tells him over and over how wrong he was.

( _ The wide and wild grin on his face as he hefts the baseball bat and yells “This is justifiable self-defense!” and  _ **_swings--_ ** )

“Your femur is broken,” the doctor had said, flipping through his fancy-ass medical charts, not like Ryuji’d been paying any attention at that point. “Clean through. To fix it, we’ll need to take a titanium rod and…”

Words, words words; four more days in the hospital, two weeks off his feet, four to six months time to heal, and none of it matters. Bed rest, recovery time,  _none_  of that shit matters, his leg is  _ fucked _ . All that matters is his mom sitting by his bedside holding his hand, that worried furrow he hates between her brow, talking to the doctor in hushed tones. When he asks her to leave the room with him she hesitates, tries to meet Ryuji’s eyes.

He can’t let her. He stares at the gross gray wall on the other side of the gross gray hospital room, and squeezes his eyes shut when she kisses his forehead.

That’s it. Everything’s done. Sports scholarship? A way up and out of their situation? Gone like dust in the wind.

It’s not like he expected a ton of people to come see him, but he’d thought-- shit, at least one or two guys from the track team could’ve shown up. But no. No one comes.

No one but Ann.

She’s the first, aside from his mom, and she shows up five days later when he’s already settled home, aching and furious and bored out of his skull.

She still knows where the spare key is kept. She lets herself in bold as you please, calls out “Hey, Ryuji! I’m not breaking into your house, I promise!” light and airy. Ryuji’s bedroom is tucked back away from the front of the apartment; he doesn’t catch a glimpse of her till she walks into the room with a bouquet of flowers and a plastic bag that smells like it’s full of takeout.

“The hell are you doin’ here?” he asks, pain and unfamiliarity making him ruder than he should be. “Do you just go barging into people’s houses on the regular?”

“Just yours,” she says, shoving a stack of manga off of Ryuji’s dresser to make room for the bag full of food. He can smell it from the bed; his mouth waters. Mom’d left him snacks and stuff, but he’d eaten ‘em hours ago, and she’s not due back till late. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner, no one on the track team wanted to say what happened.”

“What, that I ran so hard my effin’ leg broke?”

“No.” It’s a quiet, grim word, and her eyes are downcast when she turns to face him. “About Kamoshida.”

“Don’t say his fuckin’ name here,” Ryuji snaps, and  _ god _  what he wouldn’t give to roll over, to face away from that pity-filled gaze, but if he so much as rocks wrong his leg flares up like a fireball. He’s stuck here, stuck in this stupid bed in this stupid house in this stupid town and he’s  _ never gonna run again— _

“Sorry.” There’s footsteps, and then Ann sets a styrofoam plate full of curry onto his lap. He struggles to his elbows; she sticks a pillow behind his back before he can reach for it himself. “I hope this is okay. I’d’ve brought ramen, but that’s not really the best thing to eat in bed.”

“And curry is?” Ryuji mutters.

“Shut up, it’s better than ramen. Better for you, too. You’re welcome,” she says pointedly. “I came all this way—“

“No one asked you to.”

“Do you want me to take my curry and go, Ryuji?” Ann snaps, full of fire and brimstone. Ryuji jerks his head up; that’s a tone he remembers from his childhood, when they’d play pirates and robbers on the playground. That’s a tone he’d thought faded long ago, smothered by cruel comments and over-long looks from passers-by. “Because I will.”

“Don’t,” he sighs, and picks up the plastic fork she’d set beside him. “Um. Thanks.”

They eat in semi-awkward silence. When Ryuji is done Ann offers him seconds; he declines, and she takes his plate out to the garbage for him.

In her absence, the silence is overwhelmingly pointed.

No one came.  _ Not one of them. _  What sort of effin’ friends are they?! Were they all that afraid of Kamoshida?! He’d thought—

He’d –

He doesn’t hear Ann step back into the room, doesn’t see her with the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes, trying to hold back the tears threatening to escape. What a fucking mess he is. No wonder no one came.

He can’t bring himself to shrug away the hand that falls onto his shoulder.

“Boys are so stupid,” Ann sighs, squeezing his shoulder once. “Shove over.”

“Shove—what?” He drops his hands to blink up at her, baffled.

“You heard me.” She walks around the edge of the bed to get to his other side. “It’s the right leg, right? If I sit on the right it won’t hurt you?”

“Uh,” Ryuji says dumbly, but it doesn’t matter because she’s already climbing into his bed. “What, um. What are you doing.”

It’s a dumb question. She’s snuggling up beside him, over the blankets. Her knee nudges his uninjured leg; when he lifts it she sandwiches it between her calves. If it was at any other time it’d be kinda cute, maybe a little hot, but instead it’s just…awkward. 

Awkward, but weirdly comfortable.

“Call it payback for when I lent you money at the aquarium,” she suggests, settling down more firmly beside him, her head tucked into the crook of his neck. She’s overly careful not to jostle his leg, and he wipes his eyes roughly with the heel of his palm. “Or compound interest, whatever.”

“You’re chargin’ me for climbin’ into bed with me?” he asks thickly, swallowing around the gross lump of tears in his throat. “That’s bullshit—“

“Shut up,” she says kindly, and wraps her arm around his waist over the blankets. “Where’s your remote?”

Wordlessly, he grabs it off the nightstand and turns on the tv at the foot of the bed.

They used to do this as middle schoolers, before the stigma of cooties, before boys vs girls, before Ann grew up and out and Ryuji dyed his hair. They’d come over to Ryuji’s apartment and curl up together on the couch to watch after school cartoons. Ann wanted to avoid the sterility and the loneliness of living with caretakers as her parents circled the globe; Ryuji just wanted someone to watch cartoons with.

She sighs into his neck as the familiar strains of the Digimon opening fill the room. “Do you want something to drink?”

He shrugs, just enough to move her head without dislodging her.

“Too bad. I’m comfy.” She re-settles her chin on his shoulder, and he uses the corner of the sheet to wipe his eyes surreptitiously.

“This is weird,” he says softly. “Why’re you—“

“It’s only weird if you make it weird.” Her tone is snappish, but her voice is soft. “Just…pretend it’s like it was a couple years ago.”

“We’re way too big to pretend.”

“Are you calling me fat, Ryuji?!”

“N-no! I just— _ augh _ , girls are so weird! You come into my house, you bring me curry, you  _ crawl into bed with me— _ “

“You’re making it weird! I told you not to make it weird!”

“It was already weird without me making it weird!”

“Can you just accept that someone cares about you for once, you idiot?” Her arm tightens, like she wants to thump him. He remembers the punches she used to dispense on the playground in middle school and flinches a bit. “It’s not weird.”

“You’re weird,” he mutters, face hot.

“No, you.” She sighs. “It’s been a long time since we were this close.”

“Yeah. It’s—“

“Don’t. It’s not.”

“Nice.”

“Oh. That, yeah. It is nice.”

“Yeah.” He swallows. “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” she repeats. “It’s fine.”

They fall silent, and watch cartoons till shadows fill the room, and though Ryuji’s leg throbs with the beat of his heart, he feels calmer and more settled than he has been in a long, long time.

**Author's Note:**

> i promised i'd get this up like forever ago, sorry : (


End file.
